This is my friend, Robin Wales. I met him in Australia three weeks ago. He is 87 years old and for the past 20 years has been traveling back and forth to the Thai Burma border to teach medics how to identify and treat strains of Malaria. He’s a Partners Relief & Development honorary lifetime staff member. He’s a infectious disease specialist who retired and now uses his training to help others. He carries microscopes and parts to repair old ones in his suitcase every time he crosses the ocean from his home in Australia.
He hikes long distances in camps and dangerous places along the border to meet the refugees he helps train. He encourages everyone he meets with a smile, a gentle hand shake, or a prayer for peace and healing. Robin isn’t waiting to start living his dream. He’s been doing it for years. And living his dream means saving the lives of others. I am thankful for his friendship, example, and willingness to be the guy who is not normal. Press on my friend!
He is the poem, The Road Not Taken. He is how I plan to finish my race; doing the things he deeply believes in and doing it until the end.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Normal Is Over. 